Brutallus Strategy Discussion - Page 40

Loyee · 08/13/08, 4:53 AM

Originally Posted by Prof

Thank's for the Tip's. That kill felt good.

The fight still feels like there is a little bit of luck involved during the stomp.

Most of the time I died on the stomp it looked like this.

0 sec A bunch of heals!
0 sec Brut MH hit 9.5k
0 sec Brut OH hit 4.5k
maybe 1 heal
1 sec Brut MH hit 9.5k
1 sec Brut OH hit 4.5k
Dead tank

It's possible the Iron shield and Inspiration/Ancestral Fortitude dropped at the wrong time, but he's got some stupid insane burst. The best way I found to mitigate this was to use Nightmare seeds, SMV trinket, and last stand to pump up health when I have to eat a stomp.

My main point is that the burst during stomp is just insane, and his debuffed swing rate is still faster then 2 secs. If heals get synchronized, then you can easily die between spammed heals. It seems like 1 in 3 attempt a tank is just gonna get smushed like a spider.

You should use all your consumable/trinket timers you have for stomp.
Moroes trinket has a 2 minute cooldown, so you can use it every second stomp basically.Shadowmoon Insignia has a 3 minute cooldown, use it together with a nightmare seeds. When both trinkets and nightmare seeds are on cooldown use Laststand and that helps you already over all the stomps in the 6 minutes.
You can pop shieldwall for safety when he is on a low percentage or if you are gonna eat 2 stomps in a row.

I am not exactly sure what's the best gear to use but so far i didn't die the last months on brutallus while balancing the gear around 21k+ hp fully buffed with consumables and the rest on avoidance. I am sure most of the guilds have too many protector tokens anyway, so you can just get 2 sets differently enchanted/gemmed for stamina or avoidance.

Kewangeder · 08/14/08, 2:41 AM

I've been asked to solicit feedback from experienced warrior tanks on how best to improve gear.

Anblar's Brutallus gear

That link reports 16304 health unbuffed, and about 58% dodge+parry.

Tonight was a learning night, 2 tanks, 8 healers, with 2 healers healing burn full time according to our coordinator, which should mean the tank healing was about what we'd expect on a full-dps attempt. Our best attempt had us last about 4:30, when I think something happened that wasn't the healers' fault, so I'm hoping we're on track to survive to enrage.

As DPS, I'm having to invis around 0:45 in time to pop first cooldowns at 1:00 (my personal plan is 1:00, 3:00, 5:00-or-20%) and I've yet to use flame caps, dest pots, drums, or heroism. (Tonight would've been cap- and pot-less anyway; I wasn't in the shadowpriest group.) Obviously, I'm hoping for more threat, but I don't know how survivable this gearset would be once we shave off that 8th healer, so if that looks like it's too slim on that front, I'd like to know that, too.

I can say that he has no problem generating sufficient threat on, say, Teron, even when we'd pop everything but drums in the first ten seconds. Obviously Brutallus is more demanding on the tank. If needed, I could inquire into what he uses on Teron (I assume he stacks more threat there; we've had tanks actually be rage-starved in full avoidance).

(Yes, a few of my gem choices aren't best in slot - two blues were needed to make the metagem work...)

Contego · 08/14/08, 11:05 AM

Looking more at Anblar's spec than his gear shows 2/2 Imp Taunt and only 3/5 Cruelty.

I'd move the 2 points from imp taunt, which will be useless on Brutallus to max out Cruelty.

Other than that I'd look at your group setups and the threat support you are providing the tank with

malthrin · 08/14/08, 1:07 PM

If your other tank is a Feral, I suggest leading with him in order to establish a better initial threat lead.

righthorn · 08/14/08, 1:32 PM

Druid tanking starting off with a BL on the pull will practically guarantee no threat problems. If you're still having problems your warrior can try 'shout-twisting' - battle during normal hits, commanding before/during stomp, then back to battle.

Denogran · 08/14/08, 2:18 PM

Originally Posted by Kewangeder

I've been asked to solicit feedback from experienced warrior tanks on how best to improve gear.

Anblar's Brutallus gear

That link reports 16304 health unbuffed, and about 58% dodge+parry.

Tonight was a learning night, 2 tanks, 8 healers, with 2 healers healing burn full time according to our coordinator, which should mean the tank healing was about what we'd expect on a full-dps attempt. Our best attempt had us last about 4:30, when I think something happened that wasn't the healers' fault, so I'm hoping we're on track to survive to enrage.

As DPS, I'm having to invis around 0:45 in time to pop first cooldowns at 1:00 (my personal plan is 1:00, 3:00, 5:00-or-20%) and I've yet to use flame caps, dest pots, drums, or heroism. (Tonight would've been cap- and pot-less anyway; I wasn't in the shadowpriest group.) Obviously, I'm hoping for more threat, but I don't know how survivable this gearset would be once we shave off that 8th healer, so if that looks like it's too slim on that front, I'd like to know that, too.

I can say that he has no problem generating sufficient threat on, say, Teron, even when we'd pop everything but drums in the first ten seconds. Obviously Brutallus is more demanding on the tank. If needed, I could inquire into what he uses on Teron (I assume he stacks more threat there; we've had tanks actually be rage-starved in full avoidance).

(Yes, a few of my gem choices aren't best in slot - two blues were needed to make the metagem work...)

Teron and Brutallus aren't really comparable for tanks. Brutallus just has a far bigger capability of wtfpwning you, it definitely affects the gearing choices.

Really, your threat situation actually depends a lot on both tanks. I'd say two warriors is the hardest, as of the 3 tank types warriors generate the least amount of threat. Make sure you're having the right tank go first, make sure your tanks are doing their highest threat rotations - which probably won't be their normal rotations due to the basically unlimited rage/mana they'll have.

Finally, expect their dps to get better as they become more comfortable with the fight, especially the timings of the stomps and taunts.

Scarlanah · 08/14/08, 2:28 PM

This is more of a rogue question but also falls under brutallus, so i thought here might be fine to ask.

I am trying to ascertain the absolute best way to cycle my Combo points, and the spreadsheet doesn't seem to give me the option I want for cycling.

From the moment Misdirect goes off, and brut is pulled, I am stealthed in my position behind him. open with garotte, then snd. Bf+haste pot. SS til i have 4-5 CP's. I will go for 5 combo points if my SnD is still running. then SS for 5 CP , adren rush, rupture, SS X5 evicerate, SS til 4-5 points and SnD again based on how much time is available on SnD. I sometimes weight losing 1-3 seconds of SnD to get a 5th CP... not sure if its worth it or not ? At this point I can use a 5 SS and 5 Rupture cycle, but I generally have 9-12 seconds left on SnD when I am ready to renew it. So here is where I kinda experiment, since the talent Murder has no effect on Brut, I put those points into imp evic. When using the 5 cycle SS/rupture, and having an avg of 10 secs left on SND, I put 3 points up, evic and then get 5 and refresh SND, however, if I dont get an energy proc I can only do a 4/5 cycle... but the next time around I can go back to a 5/5 cycle.

My question is, does this make sense ? Or am i better to just lose however long I have left on SND, refresh it and get the 5 point rupture back up again ?

currently we have killed Brut 1x, I had 2374 DPS and was the highest damage in the raid. We killed him with 4 secs to spare before enrage, and I am just trying to improve upon myself.

Kewangeder · 08/14/08, 4:13 PM

Our other tank last night was indeed feral - but that's not constant. We have a protadin and a second warrior as well.

My mention of Teron was more to note that the threat rotation is likely fine; he's familiar enough by now with the rhythm of Brutallus that the gear set is probably the bottleneck. The talent suggestions are also noted and appreciated. We also have group optimizations yet to work out, as we're just now getting the healing consistent. One of our retired tanks also suggested an agi totem for the warrior, IIRC, but I'll keep the feral-first option in mind as well.

Dominus · 08/14/08, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by Scarlanah

This is more of a rogue question but also falls under brutallus, so i thought here might be fine to ask.

I am trying to ascertain the absolute best way to cycle my Combo points, and the spreadsheet doesn't seem to give me the option I want for cycling.

From the moment Misdirect goes off, and brut is pulled, I am stealthed in my position behind him. open with garotte, then snd. Bf+haste pot. SS til i have 4-5 CP's. I will go for 5 combo points if my SnD is still running. then SS for 5 CP , adren rush, rupture, SS X5 evicerate, SS til 4-5 points and SnD again based on how much time is available on SnD. I sometimes weight losing 1-3 seconds of SnD to get a 5th CP... not sure if its worth it or not ? At this point I can use a 5 SS and 5 Rupture cycle, but I generally have 9-12 seconds left on SnD when I am ready to renew it. So here is where I kinda experiment, since the talent Murder has no effect on Brut, I put those points into imp evic. When using the 5 cycle SS/rupture, and having an avg of 10 secs left on SND, I put 3 points up, evic and then get 5 and refresh SND, however, if I dont get an energy proc I can only do a 4/5 cycle... but the next time around I can go back to a 5/5 cycle.

My question is, does this make sense ? Or am i better to just lose however long I have left on SND, refresh it and get the 5 point rupture back up again ?

currently we have killed Brut 1x, I had 2374 DPS and was the highest damage in the raid. We killed him with 4 secs to spare before enrage, and I am just trying to improve upon myself.

Don't drop SnD. A 5th CP is definitely not worth 1-3 seconds without SnD, especially on a tank and spank where you should never drop SnD.

The 3 point eviscerates lead me to believe you should cut your cycles down to 4s/5r (not for sure, but your gear looks similar enough to where mine was for our first Brut kill). That's the cycle I've been using since breaking my 4 pc T5, and it is still easily managed. Beyond switching that up, eviscerate is only a good option for the second 5 pointer out of AR. If you cut down your cycle so that you aren't refreshing with so much time left (ideally you pool until there is a split second left and then refresh), you gain rupture up time (5 pt rupture every 9 CPs as opposed to every 10 CPs). The whole reason cycles exist is to achieve 100% slice uptime while providing the highest rupture up time possible.

For Brut specifically, I usually open with a 2 pt SnD, immediately BF/haste pot, build 4 CPs, let energy pool to 40-60, refresh SnD, AR, 5 pt rupture, 5 pt evisc, build back up to 4 pt SnD, and then settle into the 4s/5r rotation. Once beyond this point, use cooldowns as applicable, make sure you are calling the melee heroism/BL to coincide with your BF/haste pot CDs being back up, and just concentrate on your rotation.

Shha · 08/14/08, 7:24 PM

I would argue about warrior being weakest threat on Brutallus. There are fights where warrior threat is sucky (entropius in avoidance gear, or twins offtanking). Brutallus isnt one of them. Basically full rage bar all the time + better threat dump in heroic vs maul + easily capped expertise after just few upgrades, makes warriors produce maybe the best threat out of all tanks. Its possible that your warriors dont gear optimally for the fight too, or are undergeared and compensate while losing out on threat (and by undergeared I mean not fully BT/MH/Kalecgos geared - rest is optional).

• Daboran · 08/14/08, 8:24 PM

Need some help here:

We've been farming Brutallus for weeks now, but last night was the most goddawful mess of a raid I've ever been on. As we're geared enough, I took 8 healers last night. In theory it sohuld have been a breeze, but we had nothing but tank deaths all night.

For the life of me I can't find out whats the heck is going wrong. How can we keep getting tank deaths with 2 Pali, a Holy Priest AND a Shaman healing the tanks? As you can see I even went for 2 Ferals for the later tries but it was only marginally more stable.

WWS: WWS Loading...

Are the 3.8k Holy Lights big enough from the Palis? Were we just insanely unlucky?

Ragnor · 08/14/08, 8:36 PM

Originally Posted by Shha

I would argue about warrior being weakest threat on Brutallus. There are fights where warrior threat is sucky (entropius in avoidance gear, or twins offtanking). Brutallus isnt one of them. Basically full rage bar all the time + better threat dump in heroic vs maul + easily capped expertise after just few upgrades, makes warriors produce maybe the best threat out of all tanks. Its possible that your warriors dont gear optimally for the fight too, or are undergeared and compensate while losing out on threat (and by undergeared I mean not fully BT/MH/Kalecgos geared - rest is optional).

A warrior's threat isn't weak per se but it is the weaker than paladin's and druids on this fight.

It's a dual wielding demon if your warrior is doing more threat than your prot paladin or feral druid on this fight something is probably wrong with your druid or paladin.

Ragnor · 08/14/08, 8:52 PM

Originally Posted by Daboran

...How can we keep getting tank deaths with 2 Pali, a Holy Priest AND a Shaman healing the tanks? As you can see I even went for 2 Ferals for the later tries but it was only marginally more stable.

WWS: WWS Loading...

Are the 3.8k Holy Lights big enough from the Palis? Were we just insanely unlucky?

Tell your healers to stop being crap and chain cast max rank right before stomp and during it. Here's a section of the wws actor log from attempt #7. It's pretty clear what happened. Healers didn't uprank and in a 3 second period some of them didn't even heal.

20:16'47.215 Brutallus's Swing hits Gloombone for 5236 Physical
20:16'47.335 Brutallus's Stomp hits Gloombone for 5123 Physical
20:16'47.688 Gloombone gains aura Hardened Skin
20:16'47.761 Epidemi's Holy Light heals Gloombone for 2915 <<<< Using R7 indicating a mana problem?
20:16'48.112 Gloombone is afflicted by Stomp
20:16'48.160 Finçh's Holy Light crit heals Gloombone for 5489 <<<< Should be R11 not R9
20:16'48.300 Brutallus's Swing hits Gloombone for 4056 Physical (496 blocked)
20:16'48.300 Brutallus's Swing hits Gloombone for 9503 Physical (496 blocked)
20:16'48.503 Gloombone gains aura Earth Shield
20:16'48.504 Gloombone gains aura Shield Block
20:16'48.859 Kotik's Renew tick heals Gloombone for 954 <<<< Where is the priests real heal in this 3sec window?
20:16'48.907 Lowfatmilk's Healing Wave heals Gloombone for 3784 <<<< Should have been a higher rank
20:16'49.400 Brutallus's Swing hits Gloombone for 8162 Physical (496 blocked)
20:16'49.400 Brutallus's Swing hits Gloombone for 4756 Physical
20:16'50.512 Gloombone dies

Scarlanah · 08/14/08, 11:02 PM

Originally Posted by Dominus

Don't drop SnD. A 5th CP is definitely not worth 1-3 seconds without SnD, especially on a tank and spank where you should never drop SnD.

The 3 point eviscerates lead me to believe you should cut your cycles down to 4s/5r (not for sure, but your gear looks similar enough to where mine was for our first Brut kill). That's the cycle I've been using since breaking my 4 pc T5, and it is still easily managed. Beyond switching that up, eviscerate is only a good option for the second 5 pointer out of AR. If you cut down your cycle so that you aren't refreshing with so much time left (ideally you pool until there is a split second left and then refresh), you gain rupture up time (5 pt rupture every 9 CPs as opposed to every 10 CPs). The whole reason cycles exist is to achieve 100% slice uptime while providing the highest rupture up time possible.

For Brut specifically, I usually open with a 2 pt SnD, immediately BF/haste pot, build 4 CPs, let energy pool to 40-60, refresh SnD, AR, 5 pt rupture, 5 pt evisc, build back up to 4 pt SnD, and then settle into the 4s/5r rotation. Once beyond this point, use cooldowns as applicable, make sure you are calling the melee heroism/BL to coincide with your BF/haste pot CDs being back up, and just concentrate on your rotation.

Thanks for the advice, we get many attempts on him so i can test that and compare the DPS numbers on recount.
And i set up a heroism DBM bar for a lil over 4 mins in, we coordinate, BF ( haste pot macro'd in with it) and I think we are normally really close to 20% about then, so the warrior gets a nice boost then as well.

Gereli · 08/15/08, 1:10 AM

I just wanted to pop in again and thank everyone for their advice. After I and our warrior tank changed out our gear based on the replies in this thread, we got him to enrage for the first time early tonight, then killed him a little while ago.

I was a bit worried about threat since I did take out a lot of my TPS stats (all my expertise and almost all of my hit) to get a good survivability suit, but it seems not to have been a problem at all since we killed him a few seconds into the enrage without really needing to account for threat.

Interestingly (in light of the discussion above) we use a feral (me) and a warrior, and started with the warrior, and again, we didn't have any problems with threat.

Prof · 08/15/08, 3:42 AM

Thanks for the feedback, I will pop more cooldowns. I'll consider switching from the Comendation to Moroes to get an extra clicky. I'm a dorf so I also get stoneform. to throw in the mix.

I will do the following.

Stomp1 - taunted
Stomp2 - SMV/Stoneform/Seed
Stomp3 - Last stand/Moroes
Stomp4 - Taunted
Stomp5 - SMV/Stoneform/Seed
Stomp6 - Shield Wall if it looks good!

Another wierd thing I noticed. I looked at the WWS for the last attempt, and our druid tank took a larger max hit (11k). Seems wrong... I also noticed her health seemed lower then mine, but I don't really know if it's worth it for her to loose some Agi to gain more Stam. Does anyone have clicky suggestions for druids. She can't use seeds, but she goes for SMV/Moroes.

Also many people are suggesting ImpDemo to null out CoR but we have been using Screech+CoW. I was under the impression either method worked fine, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Most of the time I die a healer fesses up and says. "I had to run for a burn" I can't seem to get them to speak up.

I also keep wishing I could figure out a way to get the healers to unsynch, but no one has a good scheme for it.

Polishedhead · 08/15/08, 4:03 AM

As far as i know, Improved Demo shout 2/5 reduces a boss' attack power to 0. With Curse of Recklessness up, 5/5 improved demo is needed to reduce a boss' AP to 0.

Don't use Curse of Weakness, it's worse than demoralizing shout/roar and prevents the warlocks from using other Curses for DPS/raid buffing.

righthorn · 08/15/08, 5:01 AM

Originally Posted by Prof

She can't use seeds, but she goes for SMV/Moroes.

Druids can use seeds. Search through the feral druid megathread and you'll find macros that allow instantaneous and safe popping of seeds (unshift->seed->shiftback all instantly using 1 gcd). One of her trinkets should be a [Badge of Tenacity]. Armor is king during stomp, and with ironshield+inspiration I hit ~25k armor during stomp. For the second trinket either SMI or Moroes will work. I personally prefer SMI, as the add'l health on-use is perfect for the add'l damage going from 36k to 25k armor, and the defense lets me drop anti-crit enchants for avoidance enchants.

Originally Posted by Prof

Also many people are suggesting ImpDemo to null out CoR but we have been using Screech+CoW. I was under the impression either method worked fine, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

IIRC Screech + untalented Demo Shout is enough to fully negate all boss AP. Have your warrior tank keep up demo when he's not tanking, and drop CoW for a dps curse.

Anger · 08/15/08, 6:54 AM

Badge of Tenacity over Commendation, SMV or Moroes? That bit of armor is worth more then the stam/proc/uses?

Mideci · 08/15/08, 7:05 AM

You do get that the Badge has an "on use" effect that increase dodge by 10.5% for 20 seconds every 2 mins right? You can use it 3x during Brutallus, who you are tanking for 3 mins of the 6 minutes. So basically for 1 min of the 3 mins, your dodge is 10.5% higher with the badge, which your armor is higher for the full 3 minutes of your tanking. Why the badge isn't epic is the only mystery.

• Daboran · 08/15/08, 7:12 AM

Originally Posted by Anger

Badge of Tenacity over Commendation, SMV or Moroes? That bit of armor is worth more then the stam/proc/uses?

In a word, yes.

I use Commendation (the passive proc will almost certainly proc during the fight) and and the Badge ("use" on every other Stomp), even though I have the other two available.

Yahve · 08/15/08, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by Prof

I also keep wishing I could figure out a way to get the healers to unsynch, but no one has a good scheme for it.

MT deaths was also our main issue with this fight. To fix this problem we assigned 2 teams of 2 healers focusing each other so they can watch their casting bars and try to not overlap their heals. This helps a lot during the stomps where your tank can take up to 25k dmg in 1.3 sec. MT healing is much more stable using this strat as we have been able to hit the enrage timer several times since we made this change.

Ledneh · 08/15/08, 8:23 PM

I debated between posting this here and the Feral thread, sorry if I got it wrong.

We're going to start attempts on Brutallus tonight. Being a Feral, I'm going to be one of the tanks--probably the first one. Stomp has me really worried, as I suppose it should being that most of my protection IS armor. So I wanted to check and see if I have the stats required to get the job done.

Unbuffed stats with all Boss debuffs--scorpid sting, dual wielding, sunwell, etc. checked:
- 16.6k health
- 35.5k armor
- 54.1% dodge+miss